To demolish a home or not?
 

Maybe before the water goes down too much homeowners should be tossing a bag
of "Pool Shock" into the home and closing the doors and windows. The
chlorine in the pool shock should kill all the bacteria and mold as well as
deodorize the interior. Wiring would still have to be replaced but it
shouldn't be a hazard for workers to work on the house.

Also, they should turn off the main breaker. In some cases if there is no
salt in the water drying out could be all that is needed.

Hmmm, its still an interesting idea. I wonder if some such thing could
be done to minimize damage from mold etc. Maybe a couple gallons of
bleach?
I see a lot of potential for ideas for saving flood damaged homes, a
lot of potential for scams too unfortunately. Perhaps some ideas for
salvaging sunken boats could be applied here.

Some towns North of NO did well. Madisonville was not flooded but had a lot
of trees down. I have not heard about Slidell which is ver low lying.
Perhaps the large swamp south of town helped. No report on Covington nor
Mandeville??

Butch
"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...
Jeff Rigby wrote:
Maybe before the water goes down too much homeowners should be tossing a
bag of "Pool Shock" into the home and closing the doors and windows. The
chlorine in the pool shock should kill all the bacteria and mold as well
as deodorize the interior. Wiring would still have to be replaced but it
shouldn't be a hazard for workers to work on the house.

Also, they should turn off the main breaker. In some cases if there is
no salt in the water drying out could be all that is needed.


It's almost impossible to get the smell of "waterlogged" out of a house,
and to really repair the damage. Plus, the possibility of mold is
tremendous. I think an an awful lot of housing will be razed.

I've heard almost nothing about the many small towns south of NO. I
suspect they were severely flooded and wind-damaged. The land there, for
the most part, is as flat as Paul Fritz's EEG.

--
- - -
George W. Bush, our hero!

FEMA - Federal Emergency Mismanagement Agency

wrote in message
oups.com...
Hmmm, its still an interesting idea. I wonder if some such thing could
be done to minimize damage from mold etc. Maybe a couple gallons of
bleach?
I see a lot of potential for ideas for saving flood damaged homes, a
lot of potential for scams too unfortunately. Perhaps some ideas for
salvaging sunken boats could be applied here.

Pool shock is powdered chlorine, it weighs about 1 pound. Liquid chlorine
of the same strength would weigh about 30 pounds, is extremely corrosive and
dangerous to the skin, eyes...etc. It's designed to kill the algae bloom in
a 30,000 gallon pool.

If the pool shock is administered 10 days before the house is completely
drained it should seep into the walls and kill mold and germs.

I'd be tossing the little bags everywhere.

Jeff Rigby wrote:
Maybe before the water goes down too much homeowners should be tossing a bag
of "Pool Shock" into the home and closing the doors and windows. The
chlorine in the pool shock should kill all the bacteria and mold as well as
deodorize the interior. Wiring would still have to be replaced but it
shouldn't be a hazard for workers to work on the house.

Also, they should turn off the main breaker. In some cases if there is no
salt in the water drying out could be all that is needed.

At the very minimum, the structures will need to be torn down to the
studs and inspected. The roofing should be OK unless the house was
totally submerged, and in a lot of cases the second floor areas aren't
soaked and could possibly be saved with a serious cleanup.

Once the framing has been exposed and allowed to dry out completely, an
analysis is in order. Any areas of previous rotting will have been
accelerated by standing in water. Any sort of pressboard (subflooring
or siding underlayment, for example) is probably ruined. A lot of
structures will require some attention to the framing and sheathing.
Spraying all of the exposed framing with a strong bleach solution will
help guard against future rot and
also help kill off the "swampy" smell that might otherwise linger in
the wood.

With all the plaster or wallboard down, it would be fairly easy to
rewire. Most plumbing should be OK, but this is a good opportunity to
replace old lead or galvanized pipes.

Homes built with a lot of cypress (a building material more commonly
employed down that way)may fare better than homes buit with mostly pine
or fir. Cypress trees grow directly out of swamps, and the wood is
exceptionally rot resistant in most applications.

"Jeff Rigby" wrote in message
...
Maybe before the water goes down too much homeowners should be tossing a
bag of "Pool Shock" into the home and closing the doors and windows. The
chlorine in the pool shock should kill all the bacteria and mold as well
as deodorize the interior. Wiring would still have to be replaced but it
shouldn't be a hazard for workers to work on the house.

Also, they should turn off the main breaker. In some cases if there is no
salt in the water drying out could be all that is needed.


How do you salvage soaked wood in a city where it's almost always warm and
humid??? Bury the house in silica gel for a year?

I can easily see a fortune to be made in rental ozone generators for
removal of odor.

Hmmmm. Sonic cavitation (you know, the bubble process that people talk
about as a possible fusion technology) produces UV in water, This
could be a way to handle large volumes of water to be detoxed.
In Grad school, I worked with people who did very short HV pulses in
water from a Marx generator. It was really weird looking, imagine
lighning in water. The purpose was to produce a lot of ozone, O2-, and
H2O2 to break down hydrocarbons in water. I lost contact with em.
It'd be very useful here.
How do you go about drying wood efficiently? Heaters? Maybe microwave
generators. Would you use UV lamps and ozone generators to kill
bacteria, mold and odors too?
Jeff Rigby, you've ruined my day by bringing this up, now eberybody
here at work is thinking about this instead of what thye should be
doing, including me.

Sure you can chemically dose the water to kill bacteria and molds.

One question would be will the chemical penetrate the wall cavities in
standing water to achieve a sufficient concentration to be effective.

The plasterboard and insulation would still need to be pulled to allow
the framework to dry. If the water level was within a foot or so of the
ceiling add the ceiling and insulation to the list.

If you strip the walls back to the framing, which has been soaking for
over a week is the framing likely to dry and maintain its shape or will
the drying timber twist or bend.

It would seem in my experiance that in this situation bulldozing and
rebuilding would be a faster option than renovation.

It certainly offers possibilities for multi-story structures where the
structural members are brick or concrete.

wrote in message
oups.com...
Sure you can chemically dose the water to kill bacteria and molds.


Our next door neighbors in Florida have a stick house that sustained severe
roof damage during one of last season's hurricanes. Enough water got into
the framing and walls that mold very quickly set in, meaning within days.
After an inspection, the house was declared un-inhabitable. They have been
tearing it apart and rebuilding for almost a full year now.

Eisboch